Moelis' Incoming CEO  Navid Mahmoodzadegan Talks Deals

Published Jun 16, 2025, 10:46 PM

Incoming Moelis CEO Navid Mahmoodzadegan says the forces driving M&A activity are still intact amid the recent tariffs and geopolitical threats. He speaks with host Sonali Basak.

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After founding an investment bank that is catapulted to one of the world's most well known, Ken Mollis is stepping down as CEO of his namesake firm. The incoming CEO joins Bloomberg's Global Finance coursepond At Shaneli Basik for his first interview since that announcement.

Sali Scarlett, thank you so very much. I am joined now by Navid ma Muzad again. Of course, he's the incoming CEO of Mollison Company. Will take over on October first. Congratulations first of.

All on the room, Rotnalie, appreciate it.

Now. Your founder, Ken Mollis has told me that this isn't the end of an era, it's the start of a new one. What does that mean?

Well, look, first of all, I'm really honored and excited to take over as CEO. The firm is in an incredible spot, given our talent base, a lot of the investments we've made and making sure we're staying cutting edge, the culture which is phenomenal at the firm, and I think Ken looked at it and said this is a great time to hand over the firm to the next generation of leaders, and I know there's a lot of excitement throughout our company about all the opportunities that's going to present for me and for many of the people within the company.

To the extent that there's something new about the way you're going to run the company. What should investors be looking out for, what should incoming talent be looking at for?

Well, look, I've been with Ken for thirty years. We founded the company together, and the strategy that and the building blocks of the firm have been very consistent throughout the founding of the company. A lot of that's going to continue with the core of what we do, putting clients first, Hiring and developing the best bankers in the world, and creating a culture that supports those bankers is not going to change. I'll bring obviously a different energy to it and a different leadership style to it, but the core of our strategy is going to very much stay intactity of.

It too, is that you're taking over at a very complicated time, both in markets and in the world. As we sit here today, there have been four days of missile strikes between Israel and Iran, and Molism company has a big presence in the Middle East. What are your clients saying about the uncertainty that's building around this regional conflict.

Well, first of all, Shanali, we have Molu's employees, parts of our MOLAS family in the Middle East, and our first priority, in our first area of focus is making sure you know, they're safe and sound, and thankfully we're in constant contact with them and they're doing well so far, So that's our number one priority. Look, we're in a world that's changing rapidly all the time. I've been bullish on the return of M and A and the steady improvement that we've seen since April.

The Middle East conflict.

The latest Middle East conflict is early days and is fluid, and so we'll have to monitor that really carefully. But I continue to be optimistic that the forces that are driving M and A are still very much intact. You will see how it plays out, but that's still my perspective.

Do you think that the geopolitical tension has the opportunity to really throw a wrench in some of the activity that's been coming back.

Well, sure, Look, geopolitical risks and things like wars always have the potential to create bad outcomes.

But again it's really early days.

We're monitoring the situation carefully and we're obviously hoping for the best.

At the same time, here in the US, investors have been responding to tariffs as well. CEOs have been changing their business lines around the president's plans. How concerned are you and your clients about the impact of tariffs?

So when you look at the companies and financial sponsors and capital providers, Look, there's a whole swath of those of industries and areas and companies that.

Have very little to do are very little impacted by things like trade and tariffs.

We're seeing still a lot of activity in those areas as you get closer and closer to manufacturing and companies that are in the heart of some of the trade impact areas. Clearly that's more difficult to do M.

And A today.

And look, I'm hoping that we'll reach an equilibrium here on the terriff issue soon so that CEOs and capital providers can kind of gear into what that new world looks like, and so you know that uncertainty comes out of their thought process.

I hear a lot from deal makers that there's this pen dep energy under the surface for some people who'ven record pipelines, what does that look like.

Look, we're seeing it in our business. We're at our near record highs as well. When you talk to our bankers, there's activity all across the firm. There's lots of client dialogue. And I agree with you. I think clients, private equity clients, corporate clients really do want to do transactions. They see transactions as a useful tool to supercharge growth, to get efficiencies, to improve their market positions, and to deal with innovation. You know, we have a massive wave coming in terms of the impact on things like AI and our economy, and people want to be well positioned for that.

Now, M and A this year isn't what everybody hoped it would be. But you yourself have been on transformative transactions for example, paramounts guidance is when I know that you've been involved in, what does the deal activity that we've seen so far say about the deal activity that might still be to come.

Look, as I said, I think there's just a lot of demand to do transactions. The environment hopefully will get more conducive to doing even more and having a wider aperture on the kinds of transactions that could happen. Again, hard to predict all of those things, But what I can tell you in our conversations are people want to transact, they want to lean into deals. There's lots of capital available to do that, and is if the conditions improve, I think you're going to see a big pickup in announced transaction activity.

What about restructuring activity in particular, you see kind of both sides of the economy in that way. When things go well, people might want to do deals. When things go wrong, they might have to look at either restructuring or even bankruptcies. Do you see any trouble under the surface.

Look, we have a top franchise in this part of the world restructuring, liability management, capital solutions. There's generally a pretty steady stream of activity in that space if you have a top franchise. Clearly there are spikes when you get periods of economic turmoil or turmoil in.

Industries or high default rates.

We're not in one of those periods today, but generally there are companies that need solutions either too over levered balance sheets. We had a bunch of over levered balance sheets created post COVID. A lot of the work that our teams have been doing over the last couple of years has been dealing with pushing out maturities and giving companies more breathing room.

And for the people who don't know, you were a huge part of what had pushed Molism Company into private capital in a bigger way. A big part of advisory work during COVID era of financings when private capitals stepped in to help companies out. Is this anything like COVID? Are there echoes of it where you could see private capital step in for big rescue financings.

Look, one of the big revolutions that I've seen over the last ten years is just the huge number of alternative asset managers who are they're raising big pools of money, very flexible pools of money to invest up and down the capital structure.

We welcome that. We think that's great for the economy.

It's great for business, and it's great for firms like ours because there's now many more sources of money and we're there to help advise clients tap into those sources of money.

You know, another interesting thing about your focus is here on structuring m and A private capital is that it's also taking you into new areas, and you've hired during times of frankly crisis. For others, you hired from credit suites. You're hired out of Silicon Valley Bank's demise as well. And now is another moment where global banks are in the process of cutting hundreds of jobs. Do you see an opportunity to bring people on.

Look, one of the foundational philosophies that we've had from the beginning is to be opportunistic and to hire great talent even when times were a little murky. So the firm was really built through the global financial crisis. We've generally been contrarian. When talent is available, even if it's not the best market, you have to seize that opportunity. It's one of the reasons why we keep a pristine balance sheet to give us the financial flexibility to do that. And yet, and yes, once again when the regional banking crisis hit, we use that as an opportunity to really bulk up and hire teams in technology and an oil and gas. And we're doing that again now with the build we have in a business we're calling PSA Private Solutions for the private equity world.

So what does that mean in terms of the new teams you're willing to bring on at MOLUS.

Yeah, well, look, we've made some major hires in this space.

You know, private equity firms have evolved.

We've always been in the business of buying and selling companies to and from private equity firms, but now we're getting into the business in a big way in terms of primary fundraising for their vehicles and then as well as also being able to service them in GP LED secondaries, LP LED secondary continuation vehicles. You know, those are major growth areas for US, major market opportunities for US, and the recent hires we've announced will enable us to have a top franchise in those areas, we hope.

You know, another really interesting area that Molis has really been forging into a sports You yourself have been personally involved in the stake sale that is ongoing of the New York Giants as well as the Phoenix Suns in recent years. So how big of an opportunity is this company? Why you yourself have been on deals, But is this something that is going to be a massive area for MOLAS.

We have a major effort in a big franchise in sports. There's the velocity of transactions has really been astounding, not just with teams, but also in the ecosystem of sports companies that are providing services into the sports space, whether that's sports betting or facilities management and things of that nature. You're right, we've been lucky to work on some landmark transactions. I spend a lot of time on it myself. And one of the things that's driving a lot of the number of transactions is not just the increase in valuations, but these big pools of money, many of which are private equity focused, that understand that sports is a beautiful way to invest in non correlated growth assets. And so we're seeing a lot of money flocked to the space, and we're there to hopefully help put transactions together for our clients.

It's certainly been a very interesting one to watch now. Almost a decade ago, I wrote a story for Bloomberg BusinessWeek called how to Automate an Investment Banker. At that time, I talked to your firm about what's possible and what's not possible, And at that time there are some things possible, but a lot that was not.

How far have we come?

What role is AI going to be? As you start to let's say build out Molus two point zero.

Look, it's very critical for us to being on the cutting edge of technology and innovate and to adopt technologies that will help us serve our clients. AI has massive potential to help us be more efficient.

It has massive potential to.

Give us tools to be able to present better ideas to our clients and to help us execute those ideas on their behalf. Again, it's all about the clients, and you know, one of the things I'm excited about is to make sure within our organization we're staying on our front foot to incorporate those tools in our work to make sure that we're doing the very best job, you know, servicing our client base.

Navid, we thank you so much for joining us here today. That is, of course Navin Momus out again of a Molism company. The incoming CEO Scarlett in his first interview since their role was announced.

Thank you Schnoli Bask for that exclusive interview.

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